Pressure from KwikChex sees Just Eat improve on Food Hygiene – but more can be done to safeguard consumers

After a KwikChex-initiated BBC exposure of serious food hygiene issues, Just Eat will publish the food hygiene rating of every restaurant listed on its UK delivery platform from today. However there are still improvements that can be made.

In the UK, whilst consumers will be able to see the official food hygiene rating for each of the listed restaurants and takeaways, the information is not as prominent as it could be, being somewhat hidden away on the ‘info’ page. But at least they have acted – and in addition earlier this year Just Eat removed all zero-rated restaurants from the platform and introduced a requirement for new listings to have a minimum score of three – so already consumers are being better protected and better informed.

But this just applies to the UK. KwikChex is urging governments, tourist authorities, tour operators, the hospitality industry and platforms such as Just Eat to act internationally to help protect consumers from debilitating and potentially lethal food-borne illness.

Just Eat can expand such improvements to other countries it operates in – and there are already some official published food hygiene ratings

systems in parts of the US and Australia for example which could be used as the foundation for similar cooperation. And many countries

have food hygiene inspections but do not make the results public. If they do so, it will further enable consumers to make choices based on crucial safety information and will help raise standards across the world.